The origin
More than 2 decades ago, an impact organisation was born at the tip of Africa in Cape Town.
The Cape IT Initiative and the Bandwidth Barn was established in 1999, by a group of civic activists with a vision to build a future-fit, inclusive society through technology and innovation. They dreamed of a future where all Africans could become part of the digital economy to build an innovative, resilient society through entrepreneurial and digital skills development and by stimulating economic clusters with opportunity for growth within the ecosystem.
The journey
The organisation evolved into the Cape Innovation & Technology Initiative (CiTi) in 2015 and the Bandwidth Barn, known as the oldest tech incubator in Africa, expanded to the informal economy and the township of Khayelitsha to provide dedicated support to entrepreneurs that have been excluded from participating in the digital economy.
UVU Africa identified the lack of financial inclusion as being a constraint to participation for many people in the economy. In 2015, a FinTech cluster was launched to support innovation and financial inclusion in the financial services industry and to support blockchain initiatives. Barclays Rise selected CiTi’s Cape Town FinTech cluster as the home for its Africa FinTech Accelerator and Innovation Hub resulting in a substantial investment in the local economy. UVU Africa’s FinTech cluster was internationally recognised as being a major catalyst for Cape Town’s FinTech boom and becoming the tech capital of Africa.
The organisation also initiated bespoke interventions to address specific areas that could unlock substantial growth such as CapaCiTi Digital Career Accelerator, which produces digitally skilled labour for a growing tech sector and a campus was opened in Cape Town and Johannesburg. As an answer to the question of how we support the improvement of education outcomes in Africa, UVU Africa established Injini, an edtech-focussed incubator helping businesses in Pan Africa to grow and scale.
The latest addition to the group, BioCiTi, was established to stimulate access to the bioeconomy and unlock opportunities for entrepreneurs and scientists with a state-of-the-art shared laboratory and incubation programme.
